Avianti Armand, Women Whose Names Were Erased

WOMEN WHOSE NAMES WERE ERASED

Acknowledgments
‘Eve’ was published in its original Indonesian and in prose form in Koran Tempo, March
28, 2010, titled ‘The First Woman’. ‘Tamar’ part 1 and 2, in the original Indonesian,
were published in shorter forms in Koran Tempo, August 8, 2010. ‘Eve’ was previously
published in Asymptote Journal, April 2013.
First published 2018 by Vagabond Press
www.vagabondpress.net
Perempuan yang Dihapus Namanya © Avianti Armand, 2010
English translation Women whose Names were Erased © Eliza Vitri Handayani, 2015
Cover image © Kristin Monica, 2010, Tamar.
Design and typography by Michael Brennan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. The information and views
set out in this book are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion
of the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-925735-05-5

AVIANTI ARMAND

WOMEN WHOSE NAMES
WERE ERASED

Translated from Indonesian by Eliza Vitri Handayani

VAGABOND PRESS

Amir Hamzah walks into a place
‘cursed by all the holy books in the world’,

but he keeps going. He says his heart
‘has a holy book of its own, and
it refuses to listen to the others.’



CONTENTS

Women in the Bible (Author’s Note) .... 9

Women whose Names were Erased .... 15
Eve .... 18
Tamar .... 24

Bathsheba .... 37
Jezebel .... 44

WOMEN WHOSE NAMES WERE ERASED

Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran, 4Q184
‘The temptress’:
Her gates are the gates of Death,
and in through her doorway is Damnation.
Those who enter will never return!
All who lie with her go straight to Hell.

A hole was created when they rubbed sheets of
old papyrus to erase that woman’s name from
the Bible, and in that hole they saw a tunnel
inside their head, a tunnel that contains
a burial plot, ocean waves, a somber night,
the body of a woman stretched and broken, a
man, a man, a man who mumbled a spell and
held a talisman, when the wind was cross,
trembling on the base of its neck: ki-sil-kil-lil-
la-ke, ki-sil-kil-lil-la-ke… and by dawn, in the
dry cracked land, restless spirits rose from the
fissures like shadows under a stony ceiling, and
then on the woman darkness descended,
a darkness so black, black upon black,
a blackness that clotted in your fists, but there was
redness on her lips, it wet the man, all the way
to his restless legs and toes and to a sign on
his cheeks that was not religious, but salacious
ki-sil-kil-lil-la-ke, ki-sil-kil-lil-la-ke… and then
the woman’s body convulsed, groaned, and
became full with wavy hair and flesh, which
was dripping saliva and open eyes, eyes that
see what had happened and what would

15

happen, eyes that stared into the deaths of
her children—her unnamed children born
out of stale seed from bursting bubbles—a
hundred every day, a hundred more every
day … payback without pity, punishment for
disobedience, when the creator—who knew
why—was so thirsty for death, even though
vengeance sprouted into deeply rooted trees in
her eyes, and in their trunks lived caterpillars
that devoured fetuses, their cocoons concealed
fire and hay, which burned night and day,
which would never go out, until night and day
choked with smoke and the dark moon, the
tears that were falling down from the fig tree,
and the sadness of grapes, unending in a cycle,
and the wind so full of cysts and death, but
the cocoons split open, and from inside blue
butterflies emerged, smelling like the sea, and
inside the dream-seekers went, the lost ones,
where there was a strait that was ferocious and
libidinous, its waves rolling with such a high,
dragging to the end and tossing about, and
not one wanted to return, but yes, yes, above
the waves the woman floated, the tip of her
fingers reaching for the foam, the woman with
no milk—the angels had dried her milk out of
her, the angels whose names were poison and
placed above the totems of women without
words, because God had erased language from
their lips, erased it with roses, the God who
didn’t want women to lie, even though dreams
couldn’t lie, dreams could only open doors for
the woman whose gates were death and since
her doorway opened into the grave, those who

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came in could never get out, and those who
worshipped her would fall into the Hole, but
see, her fever concealed clay—she was never
a part of anyone’s ribs—secret names, god-like
names that stuck to the tongues of drunken
men: Lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu,
ayalu, matrota—forbidden names, banned from
being spoken, names that will be lost, until
only their shadows remain behind people’s
heads, the hiding place of the false gods and
the believers.
And the first man awakes. He finds beside him
a different woman. This woman has no knowledge
of human skeletal system.

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EVE

Very well, let us imagine the woman exists and
the snake exists and the garden of Eden exists.

And like God, let us begin to arrange
every single thing in its place.

1 a sun to mark the East,
2 a river that branches into four: Pishon, Gihon,
Tigris, and Euphrates,
3 a number of trees that bear good fruit to eat,
4 a number of birds, a stag and a doe, a boar
and a sow, a snake,
5 a woman,
6 a tree of life,
7 and a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

A half moon is ready on the side. And a few
stars as needed. This narrow stage is too
cramped for much craft. That pair of trees take
so much space, we can only sneak in fragments
of a day and some remnants of a night.

Then we hear a voice through a fragile
loudspeaker:
‘Of all the trees in this garden you may freely
eat the fruit, except the tree of knowledge of
good and evil, whose fruit you must not eat,
for on the day that you do, you will surely die.’

The chirping of the birds drowns out the Word.
The sun hangs like an orange. The rivers flow
diagonally from end to end.

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The animals move awkwardly. The woman
stands beneath the tree of knowledge.
The snake coils down its trunk while flicking
its tongue. In this new world, only one season
is known, light and dark, evening and morning
every day, and everything that happens in
between. Not a single creature knows of death.

But we know that ‘mustn’t’ casts an enchanting
spell and God has rolled the dice. On the right
question marks rain down, but no one cares.

Meanwhile, man, the first human, is nowhere
to be seen. An angel floats down and reports
respectfully (before transforming into light
that seeps into a screen):
‘The human goes around and names all the
living creatures: the animals and their suckling,
the plants and their seedlings.’

Several steps before the tree, woman doesn’t exist.
As one that is newly made, she’s still unnamed.

Says the woman to the snake:
‘I saw a beautiful creature on the skin of a
frozen river. On its head long shining locks. On
its bosom a pair of ripe fruits. At the root of its
legs a thorny shrub. And it was staring at me.’

Replies the snake:
‘It is you. But that knowledge is forbidden.’

Says the woman:
‘What may I know?’

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Replies the snake:
‘You are what was taken from man
when he was asleep. You are not man.’

Says the woman again:
‘While everything in this garden has a name,
why don’t I?’

Replies the snake:
‘Because the man has not named you.’

Another angel flies down and plants a bush
of fire in the woman’s chest, and her body
becomes restless and impatient.

But man, the first human, has not arrived.
From the screen, light pours out and
from that light there comes a voice:
‘He is on top of a hill, naming the heavenly
bodies and marking the time they rise and set.
Henceforth, humans will know the days and
seasons.’
(Henceforth, all yesterdays will be
imprisoned in yesterdays and today will only
be a tight box. In this new world there is not
yet a chest that’s full of stories.)

Says the woman:
‘I have not yet known myself. Even my
beginnings I do not know.’

She stares at her ten fingers. Her body feels
confused. ‘Clay’ was written on her fingers
but she remembers nothing of clay.

20

‘Ribs’ was also written, but all she knows is
being several steps away from under the tree.

The snake replies no more. It slithers down
the tree and winds itself around the woman,
kissing her brow. Her nose and lips. In her
heart, night falls instantly. In her heart, a storm
brews—as if it’s from the south. Clamor on the
stage. Children of the wind curse the leaves.
Animals stampede to the side, trying to hide.
The storm shipwrecks the woman on a lump
of a tree and she’s blind suddenly.

Behind its eyes the snake becomes human—a
likeness of the creature on the skin of the river.
She approaches. She attaches: the woman and
her twin conjoin. Her body now doubled,
their lips entwined, their torsos wreathing and
feverish, their skin moistened.

A half of yellow moon and seven dim stars
crashed. The woman learns by touching until
screams ring like thunder wedged in the
armpit of the hills. And everything crumbles.
The body and fruits from the tree of life and
the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Afterwards, the storm subsides. And the snake
slides off again. The woman lies stock-still. But
we know that she didn’t die. We only know her
body has known.

The man, that first human being, is still
nowhere to be seen. From behind the bushes,

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the snake hisses:
‘Not once will you ever die.’

The woman overhears and awakens in a
dream of fruits from the forbidden tree
scattered on the ground. Like eggshells, the
skin of the fruits is breaking. From inside
angels leap out with night as masks. Each has
a letter carved on his brow. Slowly they fly
and form a clump of dark clouds. And then
one by one they fall like rain. On the stage,
a puddle gathers from broken wings. Bigger
and bigger. Until there is a dark ocean.

The woman approaches and sees on the face
of the black sea a beautiful creature. On its head
long shining locks, on its bosom a pair of ripe
fruits. At the root of its legs a thorny shrub.
And she stares at it. And is no longer afraid,
for she has known it.

She dips her feet into the sea, and the sea
opens like pages of a book that keep on
turning. The woman walks farther into
the deep and feels happy. A moment before
drowning, on the bottom of the sea she sees
the face of God, and asks:
‘Am I going to die?’

From the mouth of the snake drawn
on the moon, an answer comes:
‘Not once will you ever die. But you
will know that you will die.’

22

Afterwards only the man’s steps, the first
human’s, are heard. He approaches.
On the seventh line on the left, four chairs from
the end, God sits and cries. His hand holds a
dice. On every side is written: sin.

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